text: Compared to the Rankine–Froude model, Blade element momentum theory accounts for the angular momentum of the rotor. Consider the left hand side of the figure below. We have a streamtube, in which there is the fluid and the rotor. We will assume that there is no interaction between the contents of the streamtube and everything outside of it. That is, we are dealing with an isolated system. In physics, isolated systems must obey conservation laws. An example of such is the conservation of angular momentum. Thus, the angular momentum within the streamtube must be conserved. Consequently, if the rotor acquires angular momentum through its interaction with the fluid, something else must acquire equal and opposite angular momentum. As already mentioned, the system consists of just the fluid and the rotor, the fluid must acquire angular momentum in the wake. As we related the change in axial momentum with some induction factor , we will relate the change in angular momentum of the fluid with the tangential induction factor, .
  Consider the following setup.
  We will break the rotor area up into annular rings of infinitesimally small thickness. We are doing this so that we can assume that axial induction factors and tangential induction factors are constant throughout the annular ring. An assumption of this approach is that annular rings are independent of one another i.e. there is no interaction between the fluids of neighboring annular rings.